I went to an event today coordinated by a group called Claremont For Transmit Justice. It was meant to be a meet and greet for progressive groups on campus. (I'll have more on that later and want to thank the promoters for their hospitality and food.)
But the group that advocated for the workers on campus struck me as particularly interesting. Today, I read in The Student Life that it was forbidden for workers who want card check to speak to The Student Life of all places. This strikes me as odd, as The Student Life is easily one of the more left leaning newspapers on campus and it's not like there aren't many people on campus that could speak to them in their native Spanish.
I don't know if that's true or not about that blacklisting , and neither apparently, did the author, but even if it were not, I saw some things today that makes me worry as to whether or not the efforts toward card check are going to be destructive of campus "peace." Take, for instance, the title of that piece, "
Card-Check Is Still The Best Path to Labor Peace" -- sounds rather ominous to me. Why is card check the best path? Wouldn't the best path be the one in which the workers were well paid? History abounds of markets in which employers paid efficiency wages so as to minimize turnovers and promote good worker-employer relations. Why must Pomona's dining hall services be unionized?
(The Truth About The Employee Free Choice Act
dings them for the notion that these students are actually helping the workers they profess to help. In their -- and my --opinion, it would be best just to let the college and the workers come to some sort of agreement without the card check process.)
Tonight, two workers spoke through the use of an interpreter about their battle to end the secret balloting unionization procedures at Pomona College and how all of the students should pressure President Oxtoby to support "card check".
Both of the workers at the College have worked at Pomona for twenty plus years each. I have to wonder, if conditions were so bad, why have they worked for Pomona all this time? And why did this suddenly become an issue at a time of widespread economic downturn? Could it be that there was some outside interference?
I'm inclined to say yes. After the workers left the event in Edmunds Ballroom, I followed them out to see who was waiting for them in the hallway. One gentleman was speaking to them in Spanish and commending them for their speech and saying, something to the effect of "just like we practiced." He had a walkie talkie and was wearing pretty nice clothes. This gentleman did not seem familiar to me from my (albeit limited) exposure to Pomona's dining halls. He seemed like he was from organized labor, which makes me think this is all a ploy to just get yet another place paying dues to a union.
I have to say that if I were Pomona College, I would simply wait out all of the student demands and make a deal whereby students were not eligible to participate in negotiations. Time -- as well as money -- is on the employer's side.
You see what we have here is a rather basic example of supply and demand, with the supply of workers (often illegal in the food service industry) outstripping demand for them (especially at a time of recession.) I'm concerned that the workers are being manipulated and that many of them will simply not be asked back next semester or year.
What's more, it doesn't seem as if the students are doing their part to retrain these workers -- few speak English well -- for what is sure to be low-wage jobs. Their wages reflect their skill level and so, I say, that if these groups really wanted to help the workers, they would teach them English. (I did just that when I used to teach the largely Haitian staff at my prep school English.)
But as a lot of different people have invested in this story, by writing op-eds to The Los Angeles Times and securing outside media attention, I'm inclined to think that a lot of students want card check or nothing. And that's a shame because it's not the best deal for the workers they are trying to help.
